SoylentNews

Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase to Offer Their Own Health Care to U.S. Employees

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday January 30 2018, @06:38PM   
from the one-stop-shop dept.

takyon writes:

Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Team Up to Disrupt Health Care

Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase announced on Tuesday that they would form an independent health care company to serve their employees in the United States. The three companies provided few details about the new entity, other than saying it would initially focus on technology to provide simplified, high-quality health care for their employees and their families, and at a reasonable cost. They said the initiative, which is in the early planning stages, would be a long-term effort "free from profit-making incentives and constraints."

The partnership brings together three of the country's most influential companies to try to improve a system that other companies have tried and failed to change: Amazon, the largest online retailer in the world; Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company led by the billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett; and JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States by assets.

Various health insurance and pharmacy companies were hit by the news:

The move sent shares of health-care stocks falling in early trading. Express Scripts Holding Co. and CVS Health Corp., which manage pharmacy benefits, slumped 6.7 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively. Health insurers Cigna Corp. and Anthem Inc. also dropped. The health-care industry has been nervously eyeing the prospect of competition from Amazon for months. While the new company created by Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan would be for their U.S. staff only, this is the first big move by Amazon into the industry. The new collaboration could pressure profits for middlemen in the U.S. health-care supply chain.

Related: $54 Billion Anthem-Cigna Health Insurer Merger Rejected by U.S. Judge
CVS Attempting $66 Billion Acquistion of Health Insurer Aetna

---

Original Submission

• Insurance is Risk Managment Insurance is Risk Managment (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @09:46PM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @09:46PM (#630643)

  The above comment [soylentnews.org] was marked "Troll", so I'm taking the liberty of posting it again for the original AC, and I will keep doing so.

  There will always be risk, and managing that risk is a service known as "insurance".

  Not everyone needs risk to be serviced in the same way; meeting the needs of various risk profiles is how insurance companies create wealth for society. Competing insurance providers create wealth by finding better ways to manage risk; as with all activities in the market, the competition between participants is actually cooperation to find the best ways to allocate resources.

  Part of the problem with the insurance market of today is that governmental meddling has indeed forced insurance companies to act more like payment networks rather than risk managers. However, the problem that needs to be solved is not payment, but rather risk management, and the only way your single payer option handles that is through Tyranny, which—as already explained—will only provide a transient solution at best.

  Parent

  Starting Score:	0		points
  Moderation		-1
  Redundant=1, Total=1
  Extra 'Redundant' Modifier		0
  Total Score:		-1

• Re:Insurance is Risk Managment (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @11:03PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @11:03PM (#630693)

  The bot is learning how to impersonate others to continue the spam! Stop teaching it!!

  Parent